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Brown blasts media for resisting watchdog

Bianca Hall

Australian media is "abandoning the public interest" ... Bob Brown. Photo: Andrew Meares

THE Greens leader, Bob Brown, has accused the media of being ''precious'' and ''abandoning the public interest'' over its opposition to a government-funded regulator that would police all media.

''The howls of dismay about this are ridiculous and [they] need to stop abandoning the public interest and look forward to bolstering it,'' he said yesterday.

''The print media's being a bit too precious here and they want to be exempted from what every other Australian has to do and that is to make sure that if they do a wrong, it gets rectified and gets rectified quickly.''

The review into Australia's media, led by the former Federal Court judge Ray Finkelstein, was initiated in the wake of the phone hacking scandal engulfing the now-defunct News of the World newspaper in Britain.

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Mr Finkelstein has called for a government-funded News Media Council with statutory powers over the media and the power to compel retractions, corrections and apologies - or have recourse to courts. It would apply to radio, print and broadcast media, including blogs with more than 41 hits a day.

The national secretary of the Media Entertainment Arts Alliance, Christopher Warren, said the findings were ''a huge disappointment'' and the report ''fails to understand the way Australia's news media operates''.

Greg Hywood, the chief executive of Fairfax Media (publisher of the Herald), said he had seen no evidence in the report of a problem needing to be solved. ''Ray Finkelstein draws on a range of polls and reports to say that the standing of the media is low,'' Mr Hywood said.

''But making an argument that the media is not popular is irrelevant. We are not here to be popular. We are here to ask the difficult questions and maintain transparency around the political process, key institutions and the social environment in which we live. His recommendation for a statutory body is not warranted. We continue to believe in self-regulation, but of course remain open to discussions to improve this where possible.''